The Aids Healthcare Foundation, the nation’s largest Aids organisation, on Monday filed a lawsuit against Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, charging the drugmaker with antitrust violations and overcharging for its medicines.
The suit, filed in a Los Angeles federal court, alleges that prices charged for Glaxo’s big-selling antiviral drugs AZT, 3TC and Ziagen ”exorbitantly exceed its costs of licensing, manufacturing and distributing,” the lawsuit said.
Aids activists have set their sights on the $300-billion-a-year pharmaceuticals industry ever since big firms bowed to pressure and slashed prices of their medicines in poor countries last year. Now patients in wealthier nations want equal treatment.
In Britain, Glaxo expressed disappointment that the Aids Healthcare Foundation was pursuing its argument in court.
”GlaxoSmithKline does not believe that litigation is the appropriate pathway to resolve matters such as these,” a representative said.
Big drug firms are under attack on several fronts. Not only are patients clamouring for affordable treatments, but the drug patents that are the cornerstone of their profits are expiring. That could open the floodgates to cheap, copycat medicines.
Facing international pressure, Glaxo and other makers of Aids drugs have already cut prices to many poor nations. Glaxo also supplies Aids drugs at cost to needy groups, such as the elderly, in the United States. – Reuters